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Read to write!

Do you remember how you learned to talk? Think back a ways. You were a baby, and then you said one first word, and then you learned a few words, and then you talked a blue streak! This is usually how we learn to talk.

The most interesting fact by far is that we didn’t study or practice talking. We didn’t go to school to learn to talk. Talking was learned before school began. We simply listened to other people talking as we were busy doing other things, without making a conscious effort!

Learning to write can be like learning to talk.

You can learn to write very naturally as you go about your daily life as long as your daily life includes one thing: reading!

See if this makes sense to you. When you pick up a book, you get to experience everything the author did in the story: every word that he chose, the first page that he carefully planned, the way he started and finished every chapter, the entire storyline he mapped out. It is all there, right in the book! And you really don’t need to study the book or take quizzes or try to inspect all of the story’s details. You can just read and enjoy. Because, just as effortlessly as you learned to talk, you will learn about writing…

Then, when you write a story of your own, you will effortlessly use a technique or an idea that you noticed in a book.

New idea: Read on the bus (if you can, without feeling queasy…), read when you are sitting around and you don’t have much else to do. Read to your three kid sisters, your sisters’ friend Calpernia and the cat! Read when you wake up at 5:32 am, way too early for school. Read a lot of stories. Read stories of all kinds! You will pick up the skill of writing effortlessly.